Archive for August, 2018

Singer/actress Adrienne Barbeau, actor and voice artist Will Ryan, and writer, producer and director Michael Schlesinger will join us this weekend on the tenth anniversary edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Friday at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.

Most of you know Adrienne Barbeau as Beatrice Arthur’s daughter, Carol Findlay, on the long-running Norman Lear series Maude, while horror movie fans know her best for her performances in The Fog, Escape From New York, Creepshow, Swamp Thing and other popular motion pictures. Adrienne also starred as Ruthie, the Snake Dancer, on HBO’sCarnivale, plus she played Oswald’s mom on The Drew Carey Show, Victoria Grayson’s mom on Revenge, Venus’ mom on Sons of Anarchy, and the voice of Catwoman onBatman: The Animated Series, while her stage career includes more than twenty-five theatrical productions in the U.S. and Canada, including the original Broadway production of Grease (where she played Rizzo), Tevye’s daughter in Fiddler on the Roof, and, more recently, Pippin’s grandmother, Berthe, in the national tour of Pippin—a role that required Adrienne to perform the song “No Time at All” while hanging upside down on a trapeze.

This week’s show, which marks the tenth anniversary of the debut of TV Confidential, will also feature Will Ryan and Michael Schlesinger. Will is the star, along with Nick Santa Maria, and Mike is the writer, producer and director, of The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster—a collection of 1930s-style comedies that pay homage to The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and other vintage comedy teams from the Golden Era of Hollywood. Mike, Will and Nick made the Biffle and Shooster films over the last five years—yet the sets, the camera shots, the attention to detail, and, above all, the performances of everyone involved are all so convincing, they look and sound as if they really were unearthed from the 1930s. We’ll talk about that, and more, when Will and Mike join us in our first hour.

The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster is a collection of five comedy shorts (all but one of which was filmed in black and white), including “The Biffle Murder Case,” “Imitation of Wife,” “Schmo Boat,” “Bride of Finklestein,” and “It’s a Frame Up,” while guests stars include H.M. Wynant, Dick Miller, Andrew Parks, Robert Forster and Robert Picardo. The DVD also includes a ton of bonus features, including an additional short (“First Things Last”), more than an hour of bloopers and outtakes, and a 1962-style “reunion” interview that Will and Nick perform in character as Biffle and Shooster. (“The Biffle Murder Case,” “Imitation of Wife,” “Schmo Boat,” “Bride of Finklestein,” and “It’s a Frame Up” are also available for viewing on demand on Amazon, Vudu and other streaming platforms, under the umbrella title The Adventures of Biffle and Shooster.)

Speaking on behalf of Tony, Donna, Phil, Greg, Chris and everyone else who has helped us put together TV Confidential over the past ten years, our heartfelt thanks to you, our audience—not only for listening to us, but making us part of your life. We have some exciting new elements that we will introduce to TV Confidential in the weeks and months ahead. We look forward to sharing them with you and spending more time together.

TV Confidential has its own YouTube channel, YouTube.com/tvconfidential. There, you can also listen to recent episodes, on demand, and for free. If you visit our YouTube channel, please take a moment and hit the Subscribe button… and thanks!

If you listen to TV Confidential, and like what you hear, please consider supporting our efforts by becoming a patron of our show through Patreon. It’s easy to do, it will not cost you much, plus you’ll receive some cool rewards every month. To find out more, please visit https://www.patreon.com/tvconfidential (where you can also listen to the last few shows on demand, for free)… and thank you!
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Singer/actress Barbara van Orden, actor Sam Medina and music and TV historian Geoffrey Mark will join us this weekend on TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Friday at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.

Barbara van Orden began her career as a nightclub singer in the Catskill Mountains, opening for Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Red Buttons, and others before performing alongside Buddy Hackett, Soupy Sales and Morey Amsterdam in Playboy Clubs across the country, as well as opening for Frank Sinatra in the legendary Persian Room in New York City. Sinatra not only took Barbara under his wing early in her career, but encouraged her to help other young artists down the road just as he had helped her.

Today, among other things, Barbara is paying it forward through co-executive producing, along with Michael Sterling, the twelfth annual LA’s Next Great Stage Star Competition, the only musical theatre competition of its kind on the West Coast. Now in its twelfth year, LA’s Next Great Stage Star Competition provides a spotlight for undiscovered performers between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two with “triple threat” talent (meaning, they must excel in acting, voice and dance). Over the years, more than twenty contestants from LA’s Next Great Stage Star Competition have made their Broadway and/or Off-Broadway debuts, while 50 percent of the remaining overall contestants have not only received professional Equity theatrical agency representation, but have gone on to join U.S. National Broadway Tours in starring, featured and ensemble roles. In addition, other Stage Star contestants have found work in regional theatres throughout Southern California and across the country (including major Las Vegas hotels that house long-running Broadway musical productions), as well as local, national and international theme parks, cruise line productions, commercials, and film and TV productions.

Also joining us this weekend will be actor Sam Medina. If you follow martial arts movies, you know Sam as the antagonistic Crawford in Kickboxer: Vengeance and Kickboxer: Retaliation. If you watch the AMC series Preacher, you know Sam as Samarai Guy, while viewers of From Dusk to Dawn: The Series know him as Razor Charlie. Sam’s other film and TV credits include Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Tracers, Savages, Dragon Eyes, The Baytown Outlaws, Let’s Be Cops, Ant-Man, Treme, Army Wives, MacGyver, and NCIS: Los Angeles.

Sam plays Axel, the lead antagonist opposite Mark Wahlberg, in the action/thriller Mile 22, which opens in theaters everywhere on Friday, Aug 17. We’ll talk to Sam about working alongside Wahlberg and director Peter Berg in Mile 22 (including shooting part of the film on location in Bogota), plus we’ll ask him about his roots in New Orleans and the role he played to help rebuild the city after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; how he approaches playing villains, even when the character requires him to go to a dark place; working with Tom Hardy in the new Marvel adventure Venom (which opens in theaters on Friday, Oct. 5); and how he will make his directorial debut later this year in Code Name: The Dragon, an action movie starring MMA superstar Cung Le. Sam Medina will join us in our first hour.

Also this week: We will circle back to a program we did earlier this year when we welcome back singer, producer and music and TV historian Geoffrey Mark. You might recall that we had a roundtable discussion with Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen in which we talked about the original Will and Grace and whether that series falls under the realm of “classic television.” While some will say yes, just as many would say no because their definition of “classic television” is restricted to a certain period of time. That morphed into a conversation about How Would You Define a Classic TV Show? Geoff has a few thoughts on this matter, which we’ll ask him about when he joins us in our first hour. He will also share a story about a word of advice that Rip Taylor once gave him that changed the course of Geoff’s career.